Breathalyzers Discriminate Against Women - Part 2

We have all heard and probably noticed that women tend to become more intoxicated than men when they drink the same amount of alcohol. Many driver's education classes, alcohol education and therapy classes and other department of motor vehicles claim that it is because of their generally smaller size and lower body weights than men. There is a lot more to it than simply size and weight. Because not every driver is a 150 pound man, the law should consider gender differences when determining safe levels of drinking. Here's why:

Italian researchers found that the stomach lining contains an enzyme called gastric alcohol dehydrogenase that breaks down alcohol. Women have less of that enzyme than men. To determine the relative effects of the enzyme, they gave alcohol both orally and intravenously to groups of alcoholic and non-alcoholic men and women. They found that women reached the same levels of blood alcohol as men after drinking only half as much.

When they factored in the test's subjects' weight they found that women reached BAC levels illegal in a DUI case after drinking 20 to 30 percent less alcohol than men. See. Frezza and Lieber, "High Blood Alcohol Levels in Women: The Role of Decreased Gastric Alcohol Dehydrogenase Activity and First-Pass Metabolism", 322(2) New England Journal of Medicine 95 (1990).